William H. Burr

Commuters on the New Haven were accustomed, on a morning New York–bound train, to the daily presence of William Hubert Burr and to the burly, stoop-shouldered figure, striding rapidly across the Grand Central station toward his office. That this was a man of eighty-three, still engaged in duties as engineering expert and college professor, provided for the others an enlightening picture in the lengthening-out of the span of active life. Burr was an engineer of long and high achievement. He was teacher of mechanics in the Seventies, consulting engineer in the Eighties for New York city, President Cleveland’s selection, as far back as 1894, on the federal board for a proposed new bridge across the Hudson. Had the bridge then contemplated been constructed, the problem of New York’s west-side railway terminals might have found another and earlier solution than the present half-way makeshift. Burr was one of the commissioners who in 1889, grappling with the problem of an Isthmian canal, selected Panama. He served for many years on the Canal commission and in later years was instrumental in designing and equipping the Holland Tube. The active participation in affairs after so long a life, by this gruff but altogether kindly personality, throws a light of something like incongruity on the arbitrary application, persisted in by some of our great enterprises, of the sixty-year “age limit” to their most efficient managers.

Alexander Dana Noyes
1935 Century Association Yearbook